What if Liberty Removed the Science Penalty?

[CivilizedPlayer]

I think the science penalty itself ought to be eliminated. Making that doable through liberty only would make liberty too unavoidable for wide empires (it could add up to what, a 50% or more reduction in research times in some cases?). Even tall empires might need to consider it, since even a 4-city civ would see research times drop by 20% with that policy.

So cutting that science penalty a little through liberty could be a good idea, but ultimately I think the penalty should just be eliminated. It's too crippling for wide empires in the early game, and there's no justifiable reason for it historically either.

 

[reddishrecue]

Liberty could be fine the way it is because there maybe is no science penalty, really. The fact is that tradition has it easier to get more science because the national college is built a lot easier when there are fewer cities needing libraries to complete a national college. National college increases science and does give that much more science.

 

[GhostSalsa]

The science penalty doesn't need to be removed because it's not actually slowing down anyone's science.

If you think it is, divide your total science output by 5% and check if all your cities are producing more than that total. Let's say you're mid-game at 300 bpt. If a city is making you only 15 bpt (an almost impossibly small number) you're still gaining techs the same rate as not having that city and having techs be slightly cheaper - if the city is more than 15 bpt (almost any city with a university would be) then you are gaining techs faster for having it.

You would only ever need to worry about puppets not carrying their weight RE the science "penalty." So, really, it's a puppet penalty. This is why razing or eventual annexation are the better choices for conquests now - a question which has very little to do with liberty and wide starts, but ultimately adds value to liberty in the long run (so annexed cities go easier on policy costs).

Wide empire science suffers for other reasons as people have noted - the over-importance of population to science, and doubly huge over-importance of National College. Wide empires don't out-perform tall empires on science until after turn 250, which is well past the time that tall empires can gobble up ideological tenants and secure a victory condition. Retooling libraries and NC to provide flatter per-city benefits somehow would do more to fix this - so tall empires can't as easily beeline education - than the puppet penalty.

 

[MattZed]

If the idea is that Tradition and Liberty aren't balanced relative to each other, I disagree. Try going Tradition on a huge map. Yes, Tradition has some very nice benefits and there are solid builds around it, but it's not OP to the point of needing to buff Liberty. (buff Liberty... funny to think we've gotten to a point where this can be discussed.)

If anything, I'd alter Liberty so that the free great person is actually free, that is, not increasing the cost of future great people. (I also think the Mayan 'free' great people should be free as well, but that's another story.)

 

[GhostSalsa]

(buff Liberty... funny to think we've gotten to a point where this can be discussed.)

Reticence to reevaluate liberty based on how it worked before BNW doesn't make any sense.

BNW shifted a third of gpt revenue to a source that does not scale with empire size, ie trade routes. No gpt costs were shifted to a non-scaling source (in fact, the only non-scaling cost - the infinitely flat 0gpt of free garrisoned units - comes from a Tradition policy). Liberty is out of date. Liberty needs to change.

 

[njmfff]

Well, drop one city next to a mountain, build Observatory and there you have it. You "removed" science penalty for having one or two extra cities.

Liberty is fine as it is, maybe just switch policy orders like I mentioned in the first page.

or at least change some order to it, like Citizenship->Collective Rule, and Republic being req. for other two policies in Liberty. It makes much more sense, and it makes Liberty really worth picking up.

Finisher could be changed tho. Sure, free GP is nice, but why not move +2 Happiness per Lux to Liberty finisher? All other policies have some permanent bonus for completing, except liberty. Yeah, you can pick GE and get that wonder, but there's still a chance AI will beat you to it (it happens) and you wasted GE.

+2 Happ\ per Lux would make sense for Liberty finisher. With Liberty, you'll naturally go wide, and wide empires usually have lot more luxuries then Tall.

or maybe add Messenger of the Gods as finisher? That pantheon is pretty much useless now. It's not worth picking up over some pure +faith per turn since religion is now much more important.

 

[MattZed]

Reticence to reevaluate liberty based on how it worked before BNW doesn't make any sense.

BNW shifted a third of gpt revenue to a source that does not scale with empire size, ie trade routes. No gpt costs were shifted to a non-scaling source (in fact, the only non-scaling cost - the infinitely flat 0gpt of free garrisoned units - comes from a Tradition policy). Liberty is out of date. Liberty needs to change.

Of course it doesn't make any sense. I was simply making an observation.

Yes, Liberty arguably became weaker relative to Tradition as of BNW. My point is that the shift isn't enough to throw the two trees out of balance. Sure, river gold is gone, but there are trade offs that help Liberty. Great Artists have their own counter now, which means more golden ages, and thus more gold. WC projects favor civs with more total production, which tend to be a little wider.

 

[kaspergm]

or maybe add Messenger of the Gods as finisher? That pantheon is pretty much useless now.

Excuse me, is my eyesight failing me, or did I just see you call Messenger of the Gods useless?

 

[Veras]

Add more science buildings, maybe? So there can be compensations as there is with culture and happiness.

 

[bcaiko]

Glad to see my refusal to include an "other" option has sparked a discussion and caused folks to actually take sides.

2) National College provides too big of a bonus. +50 % science in [your capital] is a massive, and going for a very early expansion can easily put NC off by a long time. The accumulated science you miss from this plus the snowball effect that has from putting you behind the others in the science race will have massive impact on the game. So National College should only be +25 % science (the remaining +25 % being moved to Oxford University), as this will mean an indirect nerf for tall empires and as such a boost for wide empires.

I do agree with what others mentioned above, one might also add a small flat science bonus to the Library.

I enjoyed reading your well-reasoned post. And I think your National College idea especially has merit. Ultimately, I think a major problem with the city-founding penalties is they are too harsh and arithmetic (i.e., each city adds a penalty), instead of being an exponential or logarithmic penalty (where founding that sixth city would hurt more than founding that second city). It makes early expansion a non-option, in combination with the overemphasis on the National College. There's too much of a loss to happiness, economy, science and ultimately production (when you become unhappy).

Or what if we replaced the Rationalism policy (+1 for science buildings) or whatever it is with: " Science penalty per city halved". Obviously whether you halve it, quarter it, or remove it entirely is it's own balance issue, but that number is arbitrary. That, and they should move faith buying great engineers to liberty, where you're less likely to have a 30 , 150 city as a capital during the crucial mid-game wonders.

Rationalism is too late to fix the problem. The problem is that Liberty is supposed to help with expansion in the early game, and it doesn't do that well.

I agree that it's weird that Liberty is one of the few finishers to not get a faith-based Great Person purchase. The finisher is really not so strong as to prevent its inclusion.

 

[Bulldog Bats]

Whatever you choose, you need to balance it so liberty is as strong as tradition on all map sizes. From everything I read here, 90% of the players here always open with tradtion over liberty (probably even higher at the higher levels of play). To be fair, it has to be where playing wide and going liberty is just as strong and enticing as playing tall and going tradition imho.

 

[Light Cleric]

I couldn't support a flat-out removal of the penalty for going Liberty, no, but I would support it reducing the penalty to an extent. They really have killed going wide, I find very little reason to do so other than a change of pace(when people ask me how to do ICS I just say "you don't").

I still think Liberty is much stronger than people give it credit for and is equal to Tradition in many situations, but only if you play it pretty much contrary to its supposed purpose(that is, using it to get your few cities out quickly, using hammers for military instead of Worker/Settlers) rather than dropping cities all over the place and expanding a lot. I'll continue to argue that the free GP from the finisher shouldn't increase your GP costs as MattZed said, but at the very least, the Great Prophet should not increase the cost of all Great People. I don't think any other free Great Prophet source increases the costs of your Scientists etc. I haven't posted a bug report because I'm still not 100% sure it's a bug but it feels like a bad design choice. In addition not being able to faith buy a GP is also a big drawback, especially since Tradition gets the VERY powerful Great Engineers to grab later game wonders.

I somewhat agree on National College. The game is so heavily science focused that NC -> Education pushes are by far the most powerful strategy and the earlier you get NC the better. I'm not sure how you can really fix the underlying issues at this point but a tech tree restructure might be for the best(yes I know I've brought that up before). Still, I don't think straight up nerfing NC and leaving everything else the same is a great plan because that's what helps you keep up with the AIs in the early game who could just blow by you since they often don't build NC at all. I wish the AI bonuses were more spread out over the eras rather than so frontloaded but I would be taking this thread off the rails with that.

The science penalty doesn't need to be removed because it's not actually slowing down anyone's science.

If you think it is, divide your total science output by 5% and check if all your cities are producing more than that total. Let's say you're mid-game at 300 bpt. If a city is making you only 15 bpt (an almost impossibly small number) you're still gaining techs the same rate as not having that city and having techs be slightly cheaper - if the city is more than 15 bpt (almost any city with a university would be) then you are gaining techs faster for having it.

But it is slowing you down in the sense that you're losing the Tradition growth bonuses and Aqueducts, especially in the capital, as well as possibly going unhappy and not growing during your early game, which means those taller cities could easily be giving more beakers than, say, cities 9/10 of a wide empire and still not increase the science penalty. Plus they also take more luxuries to satisfy the happiness because you have to deal with the local happiness caps and the -3 per city.

 

[reddishrecue]

Add more science buildings, maybe? So there can be compensations as there is with culture and happiness.

This could be a great idea since most eras already have a science building. Why not add a national wonder (I.e science center) that becomes available when you have a laboratory/public school in every city.

 

[Hpuk]

I don't think Tradition vs Liberty is that much of a problem. I find it's more the other stuff related to Wide vs Tall that annoy me.

This includes the science limiter, culture limiter, early happiness nerf got in BNW (one honor happiness policy removed, rationalism happiness removed, religion happiness halved). Gold moved from rivers to trade routes. Most important is of course the fact that every turn you pass, the less useful a new city will be. When my average game is between 250 and 310 turns, a city built on turn 40 is just so much more important than a city built on turn 100. 60 turns is more than 20% of the whole game.

 

[Bulldog Bats]

Reddish:

I like your idea in principal, but I think that is too late in the game to overcome the penalty. You've already gone most of the game with the penalty. The boost has to be early on and throughout the game.

 

[Veras]

This could be a great idea since most eras already have a science building. Why not add a national wonder (I.e science center) that becomes available when you have a laboratory/public school in every city.

I think there should be a science building in the Classical Era to fill the gap between the Library and the University. Maybe something related to Mathematics (like an Academy) so it could be available once you discover it. Then a National Wonder related to it or another science buiding between the Public School and the Research Lab should be enought.

 

[njmfff]

Excuse me, is my eyesight failing me, or did I just see you call Messenger of the Gods useless?

Yes, it is. It's not powerful as it was in GnKs now, and if you don't pick pure +faith pantheons you can end up without a religion.

 

[reddishrecue]

I think there should be a science building in the Classical Era to fill the gap between the Library and the University. Maybe something related to Mathematics (like an Academy) so it could be available once you discover it. Then a National Wonder related to it or another science buiding between the Public School and the Research Lab should be enought.

There is a science building in the classical era, the national college. All you have to do is research philosophy and have a library in every city. The academy is available once you get a great scientist.

 

[cinattra]

Science should just be re-done period. Screw trying to correct this broken system. Brain power should be spent on trying to make a better science system.

Libraries as used in Civ are a modern invention. It really doesn't make sense at all for libraries to be population based at least through the first few eras of the game.

How libraries are used by a Civ should be era based. Libraries should began as archives or some other record storage building. Then as the eras advance their effect should change automatically or by building an upgrade to the building to advantage of the new effects.

 

[qemist]

but what I would love to see is old policy order "Collective rule" first, then "Republic".

Ah, the endless wheel of buff and nerf. Back in those days Liberty was what all the smart players chose and people talked about it being OP. Now as far as I can tell, nothing changed in Tradition or Liberty between GAK and BNW, or am I wrong? Liberty was still seen as a good tree even after the collective rule demotion. What changed was they handicapped wide by introducing the science penalty, which made going wide and therefore Liberty less attractive.